Candlemoth

by R.J. Ellory

  Two days later they shaved my head.

  They stripped and searched my cell.

  They found my wooden moth. Duty Second gave it to Mr. West who snapped it into four and kicked the pieces across the landing. I heard them rattle down the metal stairwell to the gantry below.

  He came in and cornered me against the far wall of my cell.

  Fucker, he said. You dumb motherfucker. You've got twenty- two days left you piece of shit. Twenty-two days is an awful long time if you wanna make someone's life a misery. Don't fuck with me, okay?

  I didn't say a thing. A response was neither expected nor required. I got the message and Mr. West knew it.

  He left then and I started putting my bed back together.

  When it was done I lay down on it and counted the silences between things. There were a great many of them. I lost track eventually and fell asleep. I dreamed. I think I dreamed. A vision of myself stumbling from the edge of Lake Marion carrying my own lifeless body.

  I woke with a start.

  When the morning bell went I realized another one thousand four hundred minutes of my life had disappeared.

  I got thirty minutes' exercise time. It was raining again but Mr. Timmons said I should go out regardless.

  I did. I went out into the yard and stood looking up at the sky. The rain came down, a fall rain, fine and cool, and I appreciated the sensation on my face and hands.

  I looked for God out there. I didn't see him. Figured maybe he had better things to do.

  Thursday, October 23rd. I waited all day for Rousseau, but there was no sign, no word.

  Hell, you don't phone, you don't write…

  Mr. Timmons came down and told me that his wife was responding well to her physiotherapy and had lost a little more weight. I told him I was pleased for her. I lied. I didn't give a damn.

  He left me then, walked back the way he'd come until I could no longer hear his footsteps on the gantry.

  There seemed to be a heavy silence. More than before.

  I leaned my head against the corner of my cell, stood there for nearly an hour, stood there until my head hurt bad, and then I lay down.

  I think I cried myself to sleep.

  I don't remember.

  Maybe that was last night.

  Friday.

  It didn't rain, at least I didn't hear any.

  Rousseau didn't come again. Not even a message. No word at all.

  He'd heard what he wanted to hear, justified his own piety and innocence, played God for the dead guy down at Sumter, and now he was busy elsewhere, fooling folk into believing that something better was on the way.

  Fuck him.

  Fuck 'em all.

  'Ford?'

  I opened my eyes.

  I was lying on my bed and could see through the bars behind my head.

  Duty Second stood there.

  'You awake, son?'

  I turned over and sat up.

  'Call for you… think it's the priest.'

  Duty Second passed the belt through the bars. I put it around my waist, put my hands in the cuffs and snapped them shut.

  I stepped towards the bars and turned to the right for Duty Second to check the cuff was firmly closed. I turned one hundred and eighty degrees and he checked the other.

  He called down the gantry, the buzzer sounded, the door unlocked and he dragged it back.

  I stepped towards him and he had me raise my right foot to put the ankle shackles on.

  I shuffled noisily down the gantry after him, turned left at the end and went down the short flight to the cage.

  Mr. Timmons stood inside.

  He held the receiver in his hand.

  Duty Second opened the cage door and I stepped towards it. As I entered and took the receiver Mr. Timmons stepped out through the other side of the cage and locked the door.

  Duty Second gave me the nod and I took another step.

  He closed the cage door on his side, and they each stood sentinel.

  I raised the receiver to my ear.

  'Daniel?'

  'Yes,' I said.

  'It's Father John,' the voice said unnecessarily.

  'Right,' I said, my voice flat and emotionless.

  'How're you doing, Daniel?'

  'How the fuck d'you think I'm doing?'

  There was silence for a moment.

  'I'm sorry I haven't been for a few days,' Father John said. 'I have been busy -'

  'Whatever,' I said. 'You stay busy, I'll stay here, we'll do fine. Anything else you wanna say?'

  There was a moment's silence.

  'Fine,' I said, and hung up.

  I turned and kicked the bottom of the cage.

  'Out,' I said.

  Duty Second nodded at Mr. Timmons, and then he unlocked the cage door and let me out.

  Mr. Timmons took me back to my cell.

  He didn't ask me what was happening, didn't ask me anything at all.

  He took the ankle shackles off, walked me into my cell, went out and locked the door behind me. He reached through the bars, unlocked each cuff in turn and waited until I handed him the belt before he opened his mouth.

  'It'll be fast,' he said, which seemed the most idiotic and insensitive thing to say. 'I shouldn't think you'll feel a thing, Daniel -'

  I turned, angered. 'Is that so, Mister Timmons? Is that so?'

  I took a step towards the bars and glared through at him.

  'Tell me the last time you spoke to someone who's done it.'

  He lowered his eyes. He looked tired and defeated.

  Maybe he wanted me to apologize, to understand that he was merely doing his job, that he didn't mean to upset me further.

  I didn't apologize. Didn't say a thing. Didn't want to let him off the hook.

  Fuck him too.

  Fuck each and every one of them.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  October 27th came and went.

  Rousseau had told me the 27th would be the last day he could see me before November 11th.

  My special day.

  Most important day of my life.

  But Rousseau didn't come. Told myself that if he came on the tenth he could turn round and go right back wherever he'd come from.

  Hell, the guy would probably get some reporter to write a story about the time he'd spent with me. Make a few thousand. Donate some to the church so he didn't feel so guilty.

  In a week I would move to Death Watch and begin the last seven days of my life.

  I came in alone, I'd go out alone.

  So be it.

  There doesn't seem to be any way to prepare yourself for dying.

  Dying is the great unknown, the one thing we all do that we can never tell anyone about. Perhaps here's the reason why we slow and rubberneck towards the scene of some highway smash. Perhaps we will see something; perhaps there will be some indication of what will happen to us when we go. And even those who deal with such things - the undertakers, the morticians, the coroners and executioners - know as little of this subject as everyone else. And despite their own familiarity with this closing chapter, they are no less afraid it seems.

  No less afraid.

  I am ready, I feel. As ready as I will ever be.

  I will wait out the days until I am transferred to Death Watch, and then I will wait out the final hours before they tie me down and sedate me, before they cut loose the juice, so to speak.

  Seems that before too long I will understand what happens when the lights go down for the last time. One last thing to share with Nathan Verney.

  Lyman Greeve got his harmonica today.

  Within an hour I wanted to snatch it from him and hurl it out of the window and across the exercise yard.

  Lyman was happy, however.

  I let it be.

  Didn't say a thing.

  Mr. West walked down here.

  He paused near the door of my cell. He paused just for a moment but I saw his face. He smiled, smiled with something
dark and twisted in his eyes.

  He was looking forward to November 4th. Transfer to Death Watch brought such a sense of finality. If there was an appeal, if there was to be word from the Governor or the District Attorney it usually came before the final week.

  No such word had come.

  I knew it wouldn't.

  So did Mr. West.

  And that's why he smiled.

  The night of November 3rd I did not sleep. I tried, oh Lord how I tried, but sleep deserted me for someone else.

  I could hear Lyman Greeve snoring. At least he wasn't blowing his harmonica. To have Lyman Greeve's harmonica be the last sound you heard before your final week on earth would have been too much.

  Grateful for small mercies.

  I heard them coming as the sun rose.

  I knew they would come before the bell.

  They would come quietly, so as not to wake the other inmates.

  I knew Mr. Timmons' footsteps, and Duty Second - whoever that was - would be behind him.

  I counted those footsteps, all thirty-eight of them, and when I turned and opened my eyes and saw them looking at me through the bars I felt the wave of grief and desperation.

  'Come on now, Daniel,' Mr. Timmons said. 'It's time to go.'

  I lay there without moving.

  Hardly dared even to breathe.

  'We don't wanna come in there, Ford,' Duty Second said.

  Mr. Timmons raised his hand and shook his head.

  Back off, that gesture said.

  Mr. Timmons squatted down on his haunches and looked through the bars at me.

  Our heads were level.

  'I gotta take you,' he said. 'You gotta come now or they're gonna have a medic come down here and sedate you, and then they're gonna shackle you and carry you down there… and that just ain't dignified, Daniel, it just ain't dignified.'

  Terror gripped every atom of my being.

  I was screaming inside, screaming louder than ever, but when I opened my mouth I just said Let's do it.

  Duty Second stepped forward and passed the belt between the bars.

  My hands were sweating and I struggled with it.

  Mr. Timmons told Duty Second to go down and open the door.

  Duty Second protested, said it was a violation of procedure, that they'd all regret it if something happened.

  'Just go down and open the door,' Mr. Timmons said curtly, and Duty Second hesitated.

  'Now,' Mr. Timmons said.

  Duty Second went.

  The buzzer sounded.

  Mr. Timmons yanked the door back and stepped into my cell.

  He helped me with the belt, tightened it around my waist, and then enclosed my wrists in the cuffs.

  Duty Second appeared behind him and held out the ankle shackles.

  'Step out,' Mr. Timmons said.

  I followed him out of the cell onto the gantry.

  Duty Second watched me while Mr. Timmons put on the ankle shackles.

  We went side by side, Mr. Timmons to my right, Duty Second to my left.

  At the end of the gantry we turned right, and as we approached the stairwell Duty Second stepped behind me as the well was too narrow for three abreast.

  We went down slowly.

  A funeral march.

  At the bottom of the stairwell I started right, and Mr. Timmons was there ahead of me calling for the door to be unlocked.

  The sounds… all those sounds - the buzzers, the grating of metal against metal, the clang of a door slamming into its socket, the turning of keys.

  The sounds of my life it seemed.

  I could feel my heart hammering in my chest, a swollen and angry fist, and yet beneath that such a sense of abject terror.

  More than a decade I had waited for this point to arrive, and in all that time I had never been able to imagine the sheer horror of what I now felt.

  The door came to behind me.

  I turned instinctively and my view was blocked by Duty Second.

  A long corridor stretched out before us.

  The sound of footsteps, that was all, and the echo that came back, louder as we approached the door at the far end.

  And yet, in that moment, despite everything, I knew this was nothing compared to what I would feel in seven days' time.

  The door opened at the end and we passed through - Mr. Timmons first, Duty Second behind, myself in the middle.

  We stood in a small office. To the right was a desk behind which sat the Administrative Officer, a small careful-looking man with an impeccably pressed uniform and shoes like black glass. Behind him and slightly to his right was the end of a narrow corridor, and down that corridor I could see the near side of the Death Watch cell.

  Mr. Timmons stepped forward.

  'Daniel John Ford, prisoner number 090987690.'

  The Administrative Officer checked a box on a clipboard on his desk and then walked around the desk to stand near us.

  He nodded at Timmons, at the Duty Second, and then stepped closer to me.

  'My name is Frank Tilley,' he said. 'You call me Frank. That's the way it is down here, son. We run things slightly different from D-Block and General Populace. We run a twenty-four-hour watch, and that watch will be carried out by Mister Timmons and myself. There will never be a point during the next week when there won't be someone here to speak with you or to attend to what you need. You understand me so far?'

  I said nothing.

  My mind was blank.

  Frank Tilley leaned forward and looked right Into my eyes.

  'You understanding me there, son?' he asked.

  'Daniel?' Mr. Timmons prompted.

  I nodded my head… I think I nodded my head.

  They evidently perceived something because Frank Tilley said, 'Okay, son, good enough.'

  He walked around to the other side of his desk.

  'So we're gonna be here for a week, and each day at noon someone's gonna come down and take your temperature and do some basic physical checks on you. You're gonna eat a little better than you did upstairs, but nothing fancy. You need anything you let me or Mister Timmons know, and if it's within reason we'll see what we can do. You can smoke down here, and you'll get cigarettes provided.'

  Frank Tilley stepped out from behind his desk again.

  He leaned closer still and almost whispered to me.

  'We expect there's gonna be a little difficulty here, Daniel. It's a rare man that doesn't get upset every once in a while during this last week, but I wanna let you know that there's nothing to be ashamed about; you wanna break down a little, you wanna pray out loud, something such as this, then you go ahead, son. We ain't gonna be judgin' anyone down here, 'cause we figure you've been judged already and we're here just to ensure that the letter of the law is met. Nevertheless, we don't forget you're a human being too, and you just strayed off of the line a little… okay?'

  I nodded.

  Twice.

  My head was down then, didn't feel I had the strength to raise it again.

  'Okay, Clarence,' Frank Tilley said.

  Duty Second took my right arm, Clarence Timmons my left, and they walked me to the top of the cell corridor.

  Frank Tilley went down and opened the door, and as I went down there I realized that the cell was built with bars to three sides, the wall to the back. Those bars ran to the ceiling, but they didn't disappear into the ceiling above, they met a metal plate a good six inches thick. I stepped up into the cell, and as I looked down I saw that the same metal plate was replicated for the base. The cell was a freestanding metal box, one exit and entry door, a slide at the base of the door through which could be passed food trays and other things.

  I took a step further and stood in the middle of the box.

  I could see a metal runner along the three facing walls about a foot off the ground. At each end of the three walls was a small red light wired into the runner.